ZS Associates
Healthcare
Sales
Incentives
Designing Clarity: A Formula Builder for Smarter Sales Incentives
Incentive Operations aims to get Sales Representatives to sell more by giving them incentives based on their performance. The Eligibility Rules sub-product, part of the Incentive Ops suite, helps in managing, building the formula and calculating the eligibility for getting those incentives.
Overview
Designed a no-code formula builder for the Eligibility Rules engine—part of ZS Associates' Incentive Operations platform—to help healthcare sales teams set and calculate sales incentives more efficiently.
Role
UX Designer, collaborating closely with a Visual Designer.
Team
Worked with a Product Manager, Visual Designer, and Development team.
Timeline
Approx. 5–6 months.
About ZS Associates' Incentive Ops.
ZS Associates' Incentive Operations suite helps healthcare sales organizations drive performance by offering structured incentives. The Eligibility Rules sub-module specifically determines if a sales rep qualifies for those incentives based on logic-driven rules and formulas.
Business Goals
Boost the sales performance of reps in the healthcare sector.
Introduce a transparent, rules-based approach to calculate eligibility for incentives.
Improve adoption of the tool by making it accessible to a wider range of users within sales ops and analytics teams.
Product
Goals
Create an intuitive, easy-to-use formula builder that works for users with both technical and non-technical backgrounds.
Enable fast, accurate setup and updates of eligibility rules without relying on engineering teams.
Allow customization and flexibility across complex business scenarios.
Target Users
Sales Ops. Managers
Responsible for configuring and maintaining incentive systems.
Business Analysts
Translate performance metrics into rule-based structures.
Non-Technical Users
Field ops who need to interpret or verify formulas without deep technical knowledge.
User Problems
Existing tools for formula building were either too rigid or required technical skills.
Complex logic had to be coded manually, increasing errors and delays.
Teams couldn’t easily scale or adapt formulas across changing sales plans.
User Needs
Ability to create, read, and edit formulas without needing to code.
A visual approach that reduces cognitive load while working with complex conditions.
Quick access to reusable logic and functions relevant to their sales environment.
Emerging Patterns
Users preferred a drag-and-drop interface or logical builders over traditional scripting.
They wanted function previews, formula validation, and the ability to test logic in real time.
Collaboration between teams required transparency in formula logic.
Design Approach & Process
Design Goals
Prioritize clarity, flexibility, and ease of use.
Design for scalability and modularity: allow users to build from building blocks.
Enable guided creation with guardrails for validation and logic checking.
What I designed?
A modular UI system that lets users construct complex formulas using simple drag-and-drop elements.
A library of pre-built functions tailored to healthcare sales incentives, including constants, variables, and math operators.
Dynamic previews and inline validation so users can see how formulas will behave in real scenarios.
Components such as conditional blocks, nestable logic containers, and contextual tooltips to support varying user expertise levels
UX Patterns Introduced
Wizard-style flows to guide first-time users.
Visual cues and error feedback during formula construction.
Responsive layouts to support various screen sizes and embedded dashboard contexts.
Collaboration & Execution
My Role Responsibilities
Acted as the primary UX Designer, co-owning the experience with a Visual Designer.
Collaborated with the Product Manager and developers to deeply understand:
Business logic, domain challenges, and user pain points.
Workflow constraints and platform-wide consistency requirements.
Conducted brainstorming sessions, created wireframes, task flows, and interaction mockups.
Iterated on designs based on internal reviews and user feedback sessions.
Partnered with the Visual Designer to craft polished UI screens.
Closely worked with developers during handoff and implementation, ensuring UX integrity throughout.
Impact
The new design significantly reduced onboarding time for new users configuring incentive plans.
Helped bridge the gap between technical and business users, increasing platform adoption across multiple roles.
Created a scalable design system that served as a foundation for other sub-modules within the Incentive Ops suite.
MVP Features
Rule configuration interface.
Formula creation using blocks.
Function library with preview.
Error handling and formula validation.
Support for saving, editing, and duplicating rules.
Final Thoughts
This project allowed me to work deeply on designing for clarity in complexity—transforming a highly technical and error-prone process into a usable, accessible experience. It reinforced the importance of collaboration between UX, visual design, and engineering teams—especially when designing for logic-heavy enterprise systems. It also gave me the opportunity to design a solution that blended interaction design, modularity, and user empathy in a meaningful way.
Interested in working together?
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